Yammer for internal knowledge sharing

Datum: 2012.04.09 | Categoriën: Informeel leren, Webinar | Antwoord: 0

“How can we get people motivated about using Yammer without using any authority? How to ignite the flame and probably even more important, how to keep it burning?” One of the questions being asked by a participant in the week online prior to the webinar with Allison Michels, change management and training analyst at Yammer.

Allison’s response: “Give them reasons to keep sharing. Answer “What’s in it for THEM”. Start small and get a win. Showcase the win to other teams and move team/group to group. It’s a bottom up AND top down approach. You need the groundswell of contributors BUT you also need a nod from the top as well.” And probably this is one of the key questions using social media tools for internal knowledge sharing we all try to address in practice.

Before we dive into the content of the webinar, let’s share the process we used to learn together. On the 27the of March, we had a webinar planned with Allison Michels, meant for people interested in using Yammer for learning purposes. With an interactive webinar in mind, focusing on participants’s questions, who thought of a way to involve people beforehand. For previous webinars, we experimented with a blogpost and inviting participants to respond on that prior to the webinar. That works very well, but we were up to something new. This time, we came up with the idea of using Yammer to facilitate the exchange and get our learning process started already on that platform. Allison was enthusiastic about the idea and was very much willing to join. Great! In the days leading up to the webinar, she posted tips, facts, questions and lots of answers. And the conversation was guided by a ‘Today’s Topic’:  security, Yammer-trivia, following, groups, using Yammer in existing training programs and facilitating a Yamjam. How did this work? So much happened in the days before the webinar. We got to know each other a bit, participants were experimenting with Yammer, asking questions related to their own practice, thinking along with each other, links to valuable blogposts and video’s were shared. And we, unintentionally, ‘made’ the agenda for the webinar together.

“How to get these colleagues into the routine of visiting and using Yammer??” Allison: “I think a way to do this is by making Yammer a content hub. With lot’s of Yammer only updates and content. But for that to be successful there should be some commitment from the participants. Another way to do this is by making Yammer the place where certain key-activities should be done. Whatever these activities may be.”

Some key points from the webinar with Allison Michels:

• Don’t be scared of social. It’s not that hard.
• Don’t be afraid to play.
• Avoid the ‘fire hose’ syndrome: join groups that are most relevant to you.
• Bring awareness to the c-suite (CEO, management) about importance of being online – share the success of how their organization is already being social and how it’s working.
• Bring Yammer and other social tools into the workflow of your organization – don’t reinvent the wheel: evaluate current processes and see where Yammer could fit.
• Must be driven by business, and not by IT.
• Build a team of influencers: ySquad, Yambassadors, LoneNutes
• Help your organization to build a decision tree of when to post what and where – make it easy for people to know when you use which communication tool.

As we are, Allison is a patron of facilitating online knowledge sharing as well. What would be the role of the online facilitator? Start a conversation by posting weekly. Be a thought leader. Ask the ‘hard’ questions. Continue to create a positive environment. Help others solve problems. And hold a Yamjam. It was a great webinar, with a lot of energy and enthusiasm by the participants and by Allison.

After such an intense knowledge sharing process, it would be a little abrupt to end our process with the webinar. And also as a way to capture our afterthoughts, we used Yammer for some discussion afterwards. Allison posted three questions around leadership (one of the key topics that came out of the conversation in the webinar as so important to think of….) and she started a poll for some evaluation. Although interaction online was much less after the webinar then before, it was valuable to have the opportunity to meet each other online for some time.

Want to read more? Here are some interesting links about Yammer and learning/training:

Is your training social?

Training people how to use Yammer.

Livebinder with a collection valuable video’s about Yammer.

How to use Yammer for project management.

Allison Michels op Twitter.

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E-learning 2.0: Twitter, Youtube en Facebook als leerinstrument

Datum: 2012.04.05 | Categoriën: Facilitator tips, social media | Antwoord: 0

Gister heb ik een workshop gegeven op het E-learning event. Was ook erg leuk om sprekers als Hans de Zwart, Jane Hart en Bas Haring te horen. Jane Hart presenteerde een raamwerk over ‘the smart worker‘. Een smart worker is zich ten eerste bewust van het feit dat ze niet alleen leert door trainingen en opleidingen, maar continue, en dat dit ondersteunt kan worden door slim gebruik van sociale media. Ze presenteerde ook haar top 100 learning tools. De tools die ik als voorbeeld tools had gekozen voor mijn workshop (twitter, youtube en facebook) bleken op 1, 2 en 14 te staan, dus dat kwam mooi uit.

Mijn workshop begon met een line up waarbij mensen aangaven of ze sociale media gebruiken (van 0 naar heel intensief). Grappig is dat ik dat al wat langer doe en je toch een verschuiving ziet. Er staat eigenlijk niemand meer op 0. Behalve een enkeling maakt eigenlijk iedereen gebruik van LinkedIn. Als ik daarna vraag of ze willen aangeven of ze sociale media gebruiken als leerinstrument schuift de hele groep op richting de o. Je zou kunnen concluderen dat mensen wel meer ervaring krijgen met de tools, maar nog niet veel ervaring hebben hoe je het in kunt zetten als trainer, facilitator of docent.

Hierna kwam een presentatie: Ik heb eerste een introductie gegeven over E-learning1.0 en 2.0. Waarbij 2.0 voor mij de ontdekking is van sociaal leren binnen E-learning. E-learning1.0 gaat uit van een cognitivistische visie, waarbij vooral veel informatie wordt aangeboden, maar dit werkt lang niet in alle gevallen. Het werkt wel goed als je alle medewerkers even heel kort wilt uitleggen hoe het nieuwe administratiesysteem werkt maar minder goed bij complexere onderwerpen. Een heel goed artikel hierover vind ik nog steeds het artikel van Wilfred Rubens, E-learning trends en ontwikkelingen. Bij deze ontwikkeling hoort ook een verschuiving van ‘Learning Management Systeem’ naar het bieden van een ‘Social Learning Environment’. Het eerste is systeem wat veel organisaties inkopen waar ze hun cursussen en lesmateriaal neerzetten. In het tweede geval gaat staat het leren in communities en netwerken centraal, en kunnen de tools van alles zijn. Sociale media zijn hier vaak handig voor omdat het makkelijk delen, interactie en gebruikersvriendelijkheid al in de DNA van sociale media zit.

Als voorbeeld heb ik laten zien dat je op Twitter bijvoorbeeld een uitwisseling rondom een hashtag kunt faciliteren of zelfs een twitterchat. Als er behoefte is aan veiligheid of beslotenheid kan dan ook binnen een besloten Yammer groep. Op Youtube kun je bijvoorbeeld een kanaal of afspeellijsten maken. Deze afspeellijsten kun je dan in een opleiding (blended of online) gebruiken maar is ook beschikbaar voor een bredere groep. Je creëert zo meer mogelijkheden tot interactie en leren dan als je alleen aan de groep denkt. Een kanttekening is wel dat dit voor veel mensen nieuw is, en met name het publiekelijk delen kan ongemakkelijk of onveilig zijn. Denk daarom altijd goed na wat je besloten en publiek doet.

Ik kreeg verschillende vragen. Eén vraag ging over hoe je een interessant online netwerk vindt. Stel je bent leraar Nederlands, hoe vind je dan andere leraren op Twitter? Mijn antwoord is dat het goed is om ergens te kunnen beginnen. Twitter is je eentje is erg ongezellig, je moet een netwerk opbouwen. Vraag mensen in je netwerk of ze op Twitter zitten, ga op zoek via hashtags (gebruik de zoekfunctie). Doe eens mee aan een twitterchat, zoals #netwijs voor het onderwijs en ga een aantal interessante mensen uit die chat volgen. Hier is een lijst van allerlei internationale twitterchats. Je kunt ook verschillende twitter lijsten gebruiken zoals de nederlandse twittergids. Als je een keer begonnen bent, vind je vaak snel genoeg weer nieuwe mensen.

Een andere vraag ging over een organisatie die e-learning modules heeft ontwikkeld en nu een sociale component wil toevoegen. Dit is lastig omdat het een andere manier van denken is, en je wellicht beter met communities kunt beginnen en de e-learning content naar je communities brengen dan hopen dat je learning management systeem sociaal wordt. Experts in de organisatie zullen niet snel regelmatig een leeromgeving bezoeken. Stel dat ze al wel regelmatig gebruik maken van tools als Yammer kun je beter daar beginnen.

Zie hier de presentatie:

Na de presentatie gingen mensen praktisch aan de slag met 4 handouts:

• Handout Facebook
• Handout hootsuite
• Handout Youtube
• Handout twitter

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Social media als vliegwiel voor promotie van ‘Techniek’ als vak voor de toekomst!

Datum: 2012.03.02 | Categoriën: Algemeen, Informeel leren, Online communities, Ontwerpen, social media, Uncategorized | Antwoord: 0

Afgelopen week had ik het genoegen een Techniek Talent dag, georganiseerd door BureauTop,  bij te wonen op het Vakcollege Helmond.  Onder de vlag van de campagne leuze ‘Junior Vakkanjers’  gingen zes teams uit 6 steden uit de regio Zuid-Oost Nederland de strijd met elkaar aan om de beste en meest originele Spaceinvader te bouwen.

BureauTop zet zich in voor het promoten van ‘Techniek’ als vak voor de toekomst onder jongeren.  De Techniek Talent dag – de ‘Junior Vakkanjers’, die in meerdere regio’s van Nederland wordt georganiseerd, is één van de activiteiten die BureauTop inzet om jongeren voor ‘Techniek’ enthousiast te maken. Volgens werkgelegenheidsramingen zal in het jaar 2016  een grote vraag zijn naar technisch opgeleide mensen zoals lassers, monteurs, loodgieters, electrotechneuten en high tech ontwerpers.

Drie maanden voorafgaande de finale dag waren jongeren met het ontwerp van de Spaceinvador aan de slag gegaan. ‘Internet en sociale media hebben een belangrijke rol bij het ontwerp gespeeld’, vertelde één van de docenten uit Uden. Via internet verzamelden de jongeren bouwtekeningen, foto’s van prototypes en stroomschema tekeningen voor de electrotechniek. Via youtube filmpjes hebben ze zich op het bouwproces kunnen orienteren. Rolators, roelstoelen, metaalplaten, banden en andere materialen werden via marktplaats of sponsors ingezameld. ‘De jongeren zijn heel creatief!’  ‘Via facebook en twitter leggen ze allerlei contacten en zamelen op allerlei ludieke materialen in.   Als je met twitter  #durftevragen doet, kom je al een heel eind!’, vertelt een docent uit Helmond.

Aangename verrassingen via sociale media

Een collega docent uit Arnhem vult aan.  ’Als docent geven we de jongeren op school de basis. We leren ze de beginselen van metaalbewerking‘  en zijn in de meerderheid van onze tijd begeleiders die ze helpen struktuur te ontwikkelen. We luisteren, bouwen aan het contact en komen steeds meer in de rol van opvoeder en begeleider.’ ‘Het onderwijs is onderhevig aan verandering en gaandeweg gaat bij het oplossen van complexe technische vraagstukken informeel leren en sociale media een steeds belangrijkere rol spelen.’   Onze rol is ze de basis bijbrengen.  De andere rol is ze de juiste randvoorwaarden bieden om sociale media voor hun leerproces te benutten.’  ’By the way, in mijn vrije tijd zoek ik ook op het internet naar oplossingen, als ik mijn oldtimer repareer’.

‘Sociale media brengen soms aangename verrassingen’,  vertelt een docent uit Helmond. ‘Afgelopen week kreeg ik een uitnodiging om met een groep jonge studenten naar een onderzeeboot in Rotterdam te gaan. Via twitter en facebook hadden de jongeren zelf contact met de Marine gelegd en een excursie georganiseerd om kennis te maken met de techniek en mechaniek van onderzeeboten. Als je jongeren de juiste randvoorwaarden biedt, kunnen ze zelf veel organiseren.’

Bouwen aan een community

Sociale media spelen een belangrijke rol bij de competitie ‘Junior Vakkanjers’.   Foto’s, filmpjes en ervaringen over het maken van de’ Spaceinvadors’ worden gedeeld en geupload via www.facebook.com/vakkanjers .  Via Twitter #vakkanjers werd de belangstelling van het Brabants en Eindhovens Dagblad getrokken.

Ben Krijgsman, co-ordinator van BureauTop;  ‘Sociale media is onderdeel van onze communicatie strategie. Via onze t-shirts, banners, flyers zetten we ons in om jongeren, ouders, scholen en docenten een platform geven om een gezamenlijke identiteit op te bouwen, namelijk passie voor het vak Techniek!’  Krijgsman: ‘Het is een lange termijn investering. ‘Junior Vakkanjers moet een Brandname worden waar iedereen die een passie voor techniek heeft met plezier en beleving op terug kijkt.  Zo willen we bouwen aan een ‘community’ , die  Vakkanjers over heel Nederland bindt en verbindt’.  

Krijgsman ‘Sociale media is in deze niet alleen een marketing tool, maar het is ook een medium waarmee je bouwt aan kennisontwikkeling.  Over 15 jaar zullen de deelnemers van vandaag, inspiratoren en kennisdelers zijn voor de toekomstige generatie. De ervaring van vandaag zal hun hele leven bijblijven en hen inspireren dit aan een volgende jonge generatie over te dragen.  We investeren nu in sociaal kapitaal.  Dat zijn de mensen,  maar sociale media is daarbij niet meer weg te denken……. Nu is het de uitdaging om de ontwikkeling van deze community te ondersteunen en vorm te geven.’

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The spidergram for getting started with AND evaluating communities

Datum: 2012.02.23 | Categoriën: discussie forums, Informeel leren, Online communities, Technologie stewardship, trainers | Antwoord: 3

“Technology has fundamentally changed how we can be together!” With this phrase Nancy White started the webinar ’Thinking about online communities using the Digital Habitats Orientation Spidergram’, which was held on the 21st February 2012. Nancy: “Technology has enabled us to communicate by distance through skype, bigmarker, e-mail, blogs, discussion groups and other social media tools. Some of them work effective, others are less effective. It depends on the situation. The world of the ‘paper and pen’ has transformed into a new world of digital tools. That has created a new dynamic on how we communicate in communities. If technology is not working we use paper and pen, other times we use the computer, preferably applications that remind us of the ‘paper and pen’.” 

Change in technology, can change the interaction

Nancy: “Interactions between people are important. It contributes to the development of the team or network. An interesting thing is that people start with technology where they feel comfortable with. If that is the telephone, they will use that. Nobody likes cool tools except for people who like cool tools. Technology is moving faster than people. However, people cope and will try new technology if it meets their new needs so that they can overcome their fears and resistance. The change in technology, can change the interaction.”

According to Nancy, a community is a group of people who share a common interest over a longer period of time. “One meeting is not building a community. This is a ‘Transient experience’. A community is about building relationships and small interactions between people. ‘Laughter is a good community indicator’. A community is a group of people building identity, creating meaning and getting a sense of belonging. Even if it is ‘eating chocolate together’ is it a community. When somebody is giving up part of his identity towards the group, it significates a change. It is a community indicator showing that people are willing to invest in each other.”

The spidergram: 9 different orientations towards community activities

When Nancy White conducted research with Etienne Wenger and John Smith on the development of different communities and how technology is impacting them, they discovered that communities have different patterns of orientations towards community activities. All of them were impacted by the change of technology. Their findings were published in ’Digital Habitats – stewarding technology for communities’.  They distinguished 9 different orientations, together forming a spidergram.

1. Content, publishing - sharing information about a domain of practise, the availability from information changed from static into dynamic. For example wiki’s and blogposts are updated all the time.

2. Open-ended conversations - conversations that continue to rise and fall over a period of time without a clear purpose. This gradually changed from f2f back door talks, to online conversations between invididuals. Chattalks are nowadays a substitute for informal talks at the coffee machine.

3. Meetings - official gatherings with a specific goal and time frame. Virtual meetings have become more common due to cost reduction and more effective use of time.

4. Projects - interrelated tasks with specific outcomes or products. They are the heartbeats of communities. Projects have a transactional type of building trust with each other. Online tools for team co-operation in doing projects are gradually increasing and are impacting communities on how people co-operate.

5. Access to expertise - learning from experienced practitioners. Important aspect is that communities are only sustainable if the process of knowledge sharing is interactive. If it is one-way transfer of knowledge it will not be sustainable. Communities tend to have a balance between give and take.  Experts need to take the culture and way of working of the community in consideration, including working with social media.

6. Relationships - getting to know each other. Virtual contacts are complementary to f2f contacts. They are interconnected.

7. Context - private / internally focused or is it externally focused? Social media plays a major role in communication.  Blogpost, youtube, twitter, facebook are social media are regulary used for sharing, awareness raising and public relations.

8. Community cultivation - recruitment, orienting and supporting members, is the community growing?  This is the part that something is shared in common. The change in technology has enabled communities to share their common experiences and joint results on virtual platforms. Examples that help to enable community cultivation are a newsletter, a community discussion platform, a joint website.

9. Individual participation - enabling members to share their own experience. Today technology provides people with enormous possibilities.

The top part of the spidergram, orientation 1 to 5, deals about content, publishing and projects; the hardware. The bottuom of the spidergram deals with the social part. Relationships and sense of belonging are important.  Please find more about >>>> Spidergramworksheets

Practical examples in using the spidergram

While comparing the different communities Nancy and her colleagues discovered that most communities scored high on 3 of the 9 orientations, and lower in the others.  All depending on the domain and the purpose of these communities. Some of these had more focus towards individual participation and internal discussion (for example a community with women abused through domestic violence), while others had a need for common sharing and external communication (for example the KM4DEV community who likes to share all their learnings with the outside world). A big community with around 2.500 members might have a low focus on relationships, and higher focus on content. While birdwatchers in Central Park in New York will have a more balanced approach. They want to know about the birds, but also want to get connected with the people who are using the park.

Some orientations in a community can strengthen each other. A project creates content and helps to build relationships. Nancy; “Do, reflect, capture and share. A community can create more momentum when stories between individuals members are captured and published through a website and the newspaper. This is how parents came to know through the Birdwatchers community that Central Park had safe places for children to play. This is what is meant with cultivating the community”.  

The interesting thing is that communities change over time. And so do their orientations. The spidergram is a tool which helps to look at patterns, instead of measuring quantitative data. It is a great tool for starting a conversation with community members. Regular moments of evaluation are important. It provides a space for people to reflect and see how much they have accomplished and shared in common over a period of time. Nancy had a wonderful experience in Armenia: “When the donor pulled out of the project, the community members discovered that they had completed so much work with each other and had created value, that they wanted to continue.”

Keep the heartbeat going

Three of the twelve participants at the webinar had the opportunity to share and present their spidergram. Case studies about a community around a day care centre (having a virtual discussion platform), a temporary community wrapped around a training (using a Yammer platform) and a starting partnership between NGO’s, government and experts (also using a Yammer platform) were shared and analyzed. All of them had in common they were starting or young communities. Nancy: ’New and evolving communities need heartbeats!’  It is similar to a long distance runner. You have to invest a lot of time in the beginning in facilitation and coaching to get the ideal rythm of the heartbeat. New communities have starting projects and more meetings, since they are searching for their optimal heart beat. In more developed communities you find less meetings, but more open ended conversations. A Yammer group will be helpful for a starting community. If you have a small committed group of members, it is easy to follow discussions on the Yammer platform. However, when the group is evolving and growing towards a membership of more than 1,000 members Yammer wil not work anymore. The group needs a new configuration and new virtual tools for co-operation”.  

The technology steward plays an important role in this. Nancy: “He/ she is somebody who knows enough about the community, their needs, aspiration, character and knows enough about technology. A community steward is not somebody working at the IT department. Not many IT departments have a technology steward mindset. Technology stewards are people with enough experience of the dynamics of a community to understand its technology needs, and  have enough experience with technology to take leadership in addressing those needs. Stewardship typically includes selecting and configuring technology as well as supporting its use in the practise of the community”. More about the spidergram for analyzing online communities read  Digital Habitants stewarding technologies for communities’.

Next Webinar with Allison Michels from Yammer

The next webinar will take place on the 20th March 2012 from 15.30 – 17.00 hrs – topic  Best Practices for knowledge sharing  with Allison Michels, Change Management and Training Analist at Yammer.

Other literature recommended for reading:

Prezi presentation about how to start and maintaining online communities (in Dutch)

Digital habitats – technologies for communities  – Faciliteeronline.nl

Relating community activities to technologies - Nancy White

Spidergram worksheets - Nancy White

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Digital habitats, technologies for communities: webinar with Nancy White

Datum: 2012.02.15 | Categoriën: social media, Technologie stewardship | Antwoord: 25

On the 21st of February, we will have our second webinar with international experts, from 15.30-17.00.

Here’s the introduction to the webinar by Nancy White which she has also posted on her blog:

As we prepared for the webinar, some of the random potential bits for discussion included the practice of tech stewardship, the pros and cons of  ”hopping across technologies,” the tension between thinking about the platform AS the community instead of the people — especially distributed communities, what it means to ‘be together” as a distributed group, more on online facilitation, and how to identify community activities and tools useful in supporting those activities. The webinar will focus mostly on the latter and we’ll use the Activities Spidergram from “Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities,” as a learning tool. But to set the stage, I wanted to write a bit about the other topics. Sort of a  lead in to the activities conversation. At the bottom of this post, I’ll link to all the artifacts we’ll use next week. And if someone prompts me, I’ll return after the webinar to post an update in the comments! (That means — show me you are interested/care!)

What it means to be together using technology

Groups, communities, pairs, networks are all about people connecting, being together in some way. In the “olden days” this meant being together face to face augmented by these artifacts which carried documentation of our being together called books, and letters that we slowly exchanged with each other via land based transport. Today we spend time with each other online — not just face to face. That may look like reading, replying to or retweeting messages via Twitter, interactions on Facebook, email, blogs, Skype, YouTube, Pinterest or any of hundreds of web based platforms. These platforms convey and hold the artifacts of our interactions. They are the digital traces of being together. But the EXPERIENCE of being together is something we create in our own minds as we navigate these artifacts. Without conversation with others, we may find our individual experiences of “being together” are, in fact, not at all similar. So the first key here is that being together, even technologically mediated,  implies that we have to reflect – at least a little bit – about shared or different experiences. Otherwise we may not be “being together.”  Sense-making is critical. So if I’m designing or facilitating a social strategy using online tools, I had better darn well design in process to facilitate reflection, sense-making and other similar types of conversations. Yes, conversations, which implies active listening — something you can’t always see or have in pure social media actions.

One of the tough things about all this is how to understand what is working. Is there really connection? We tend to compartmentalize the tech into things like page views. But does that tell us about our quality of being together? Of learning? Of getting things done? Not really. So in thinking about being together in this age, we need new frameworks for assessment. A nice intro to thinking about communities and how to evaluate them comes from a short video from the USAID KM Impact Challenge

Hopping across technologies

If you accept my first proposition that being together requires some sort of sense-making/reflective aspect, lets add on a layer of complication: hopping across different tools and technologies. So not only are we not face to face, but we don’t necessarily interact as a full group, nor on a single communications tool and this may (and usually does) vary over time.  Community’s technological configurations change over time. Let’s pick this apart a bit.

1. There is rarely just one tool. From Digital Habitats we framed the idea of configuration this way: “By configuration we mean the overall set of technologies that serve as a substrate for acommunity’s habitat at a given point in time—whether tools belong to a single platform,to multiple platforms, or are free-standing.”  For example, we may have a NING site, but we talk to each other on the telephone and no one every identified the telephone as an official community tool. Look around. Our configurations are rarely as simple as they look. Observe and notice what people are using. Explore if there is a shift from the official platform to others and use that usefully, rather than as a distraction.

2. Togetherness does not imply only full group interactions. Side conversations and “back channel” are an intrinsic and important part of a community’s communication ecosystem.  We talk about “capturing” knowledge and having everything in one place, but the reality is that communities have all types of conversations and interactions. Some should stay small and private. Some should be captured and shared. And some will just happen. The key is that people are connected enough so that they DO happen. The interaction has primacy over the container or the captured artifacts … even if this seems counter-intuitive at times.

3. People start where they are technologically comfortable, and move to what serves them over time. Now this may seem like a repetition of #1, but what I’m getting at here is change in technologies is actually part of the life-cycle of many communities rather than an aberration or fatal disruption. (Though, yeah, it can be fatal, but less often than we might expect!) The key lesson here is start where people are “now” and let the needs of the community, its appetite (or not) for experimentation and change drive the platform evolution.

4. A change in technology may intrinsically change the interaction.  In our research for “Digital Habitats” we noticed that not only did technology change communities, but communities changed technologies. When members wanted or needed something, they invented new ways of using tools or scrounged for new ones.  When the motivation to do something together becomes more urgent and compelling than the platform, it’s affordances or constraints, you know something good is going on. So attention to the community’s domain, community and practice (see that video above!) should be front and center. Technology supports.

 Technology stewardship

So if technology changes what it means to be together, if technology choices change over time, it is logical that stewarding that technology becomes part of the life of the community and there is an association between the people who do this and a role — a role we call technology steward. Technology stewards are people who know enough about technology to help scan for, select and implement tools and enough about their community to know what they need and what they want/can tolerate. This is not the traditional IT person or pure geek, but someone who straddles these two domains of knowledge and practice. They are bridgers. (You might enjoy this 6 minute audio from Etienne Wenger, John Smith and I on tech stewardship. ) For example, consider the person who can observe how others use a tool (even if it is different than how they themselves do), notice how it can be valuable to the community and share that practice with others. (An ethnographer!) You have to know the tool, but to observe and understand the practice — that is the magical sweet spot. (For an example, see John Smith’s post on Skype.)  Most of us who find ourselves in this role are in it accidentally. I think that is significant!

Community activities and their technological support

So this leads me to the bridge to our webinar next week. Flowing directly out of this idea of technology stewardship is the need for ways to identify important community activities as a precursor to selecting and deploying tools. In the work writing Digital Habitats we identified 9 community orientations which comprise sets of activities that we found happening pretty commonly across different kinds of communities. This slide deck gives a brief overview.

A couple of key things the spidergram exercise has taught me are: 1) observe your community with an open mind rather than through your own preferences. I, for example, love asynchronous conversations, yet in many of my communities, they would not thrive without telephone calls. 2) You can’t prioritize all 9 orientations all at once, but they may shift over time. This impacts community leadership, facilitation, and technology. So as always, this is not primarily about the tech, but about the community. That seems like a “no brainer” yet time and time again we fall into the technology seduction trap! That leads us to community facilitation, but we’ll have to save that for another day!

For participants of the webinar: to help us be prepared to USE the spidergram, I invite you to read this excerpted chapter from Digital Habitats: Digital Habitats Chapter 6.2 and then print out the last couple of pages of the spidergram activity found here: http://www.fullcirc.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/SpidergramWorksheet2011.pdf With a pencil, start thinking about a group or community you are working with. What are the most important orientations and activities? What isn’t so important now? What might become important? What makes sense on this diagram and what doesn’t? (I have a few guesses!).

We’ll use your preparation to help springboard our conversations during the webinar. Please share specific questions you would like to address via the comments to this blogpost.

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Hoe boei je de huidige leerling?

Datum: 2012.01.26 | Categoriën: Lessituatie, Ontwerpen | Antwoord: 1

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Sociale media voor trainers: think differently

Datum: 2012.01.11 | Categoriën: social media, trainers, Uncategorized | Antwoord: 1

Blogpost ook geplaatst op mijn eigen blog

Vrijdag doe ik een workshop over sociale media als leerinstrument voor trainers op het congres ‘Trends voor Trainers‘. Kun je niet komen, kijk dan eens of je de trends voor trainers kunt ontdekken via de hashtag #tvt12 op twitter. Je hoeft hiervoor geen account op twitter te hebben, je kunt #tvt12 gewoon intypen in de zoekbalk bovenaan de pagina. Of bekijk de presentatie hieronder. Ik hoop inderdaad dat sociale media als leerinstrument een nieuwe trend is, zoals Selma Foeken ook denkt in haar blogpost over online leren.

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Social media are moving organisations from a ‘Hierarchical’ into a ‘Wirearchical’ approach

Datum: 2011.12.19 | Categoriën: Facilitator tips, Informeel leren, social media | Antwoord: 4

What do the words ‘Cynefin’,  ‘Daniel Pink’,  ‘Ted Talk’, ‘Big Marker’, ‘Twitter‘, ‘Fuzzy‘, ‘Alpe d’HuZes’ all have in common?  The relation is that participants of the webinar ‘Serendipitous learning’ learned something unexpected recently.  ‘A lot of our learning is accidently, we actually learn all the time’,  explains Jane Hart (C4LPT),  ‘We don’t necessarily know what we’ve learned, till we start to use the knowledge’. During the Flipped (social) webinar on the 15th December 2011 she shared her knowledge and experiences about serendipity.  ‘Enabling serendipitous learning is one of the major challenges, organisations are facing in the coming decade’.   ‘Organisations are moving from a culture of ‘command and control’ to one of ‘encourage and engage’, according to Jane.  One of her roles in her job as consultant, lecturer and researcher is to make people work smarter.

Identify and encourage the people who like to share

Learning is about sharing of knowledge, especially while using social media. It requires a certain culture of openess. What kind of factors influence the willingness to share?  What can we do as facilitators?

Jane:  ‘Many people are happy to share. They do, because they want to and have a reason to do so. In organisations we have to tap into that approach. We can not force people to share,  however we can encourage them. We have to remember that people need a reason to share. So, as a facilitator help and encourage the people who are motivated to share and emphasize how important they are in their organisation or community. Show them the value of sharing, how it will be important and help the organisation or the community’.

‘An important pré-condition is to build a culture of trust.  People need to feel that they are not going to be reprimanded. Social media policies can be helpful, however it is usually about sharing with the outside world. Within the organisation it is more about the value to the organisation. There is a difference between sharing internally and externally. As facilitator be an example for others. Share stories about how it works for you. Storytelling is key in telling people how it works in social media. In terms of security, if you want to keep it entirely within the company, this is possible. There are a lot of ‘enterprise tools’ and ‘open source’ tools you can use and have them protected through a firewall, you own and control the data entirely’. If you host it outside in the cloud, you don’t control the security levels. However, the companies can explain you exactly how secure it is. 

Towards a performance based approach

We are moving from a command and control culture towards an encourage and engage culture. How will the role of managers look like in a culture of ‘encourage and engage’?

Jane:   ‘Through the growing importance of social media and rapid external changes in the business environment, the role of managers will change.   The question,  “I need a training course” will not be the right point of departure in enabling people’s learning in organisations. “What is the problem you want to solve?”  will be the starting point in encouraging people to take responsibility in their own discovery path of learning.  What do you need to solve this problem?  What kind of expertise is needed? Where do you want to collect the information?  Who do you like to meet and connect?  How would you like to develop your competencies to solve this problem?  What kind of learning community might help you?  The managers role will change  from a controler into the role of a guide questioning and helping people to solve their problems’.   Formal learning such as face-to-face training courses will become less important.  Informal learningprocesses in organisations will increase in importance.  Connecting and helping to find the right people, creating an enabling environment will be crucial factors that will support people’s development in organisations. In a culture of ‘encourage and engage’ the manager will focus on relating learning to performance. What is the effect of learning on performance?  What works well?  What can be improved?  Social media will play an essential part in the process of sharing and connecting.  It  will move organisations from a ‘Hierarchical’ to a ‘Wirearchical’ approach in learning.

‘Easycratie’  , the 8-fields model of Kessels and Smit  and the article ‘Veranderingen in richten als leerproces – De rol van de manager’  are excellent  resource materials in empowering managers to move towards an ‘encourage and engage’ role in organisations.

The community gardener, an insider or outsider?

‘Communities of Practise (CoP’s) are excellent places for formal and informal learning’  according to Jane Hart.  ‘Communities are about “collecting and connecting“.  They are the places where people can address their problems.  It enables serendipitous learning.  It is not necessary that CoP’s are big communities. It is rather the quality than the quantity, that determines the success of a CoP. Some people are active, others are less active. The old model for communities is 90-9-1 which symbolizes the composition of communities;  90 % are the quiet readers and followers, the so-called lurkers,  9 % are fairly active,  they read and respond,  and 1 %  are the core people running and keeping the community active is moving more towards a 70-20-10 model.  This does not mean that the lurking is hindering personal development.  Each person plays a role in the community. Lurkers will still learn by reading and following others. Organisations need to enable people and provide the right conditions (time, money and support) to encourage people’s participation in such communities.  Currently many self-employed consultant are active in online communities.  However, the changing demands in the working environment of organisations, will also foster the increament of participation of people working in organisations in social media platforms.

Jane:  An important role in learning communities is there for the so-called “Community Gardener“. This person feeds the community with new ideas, new posts and encourages people to remain active’.   Jane prefers that the Community Gardener is a member of the community. ‘Outsiders can be helpful in the start-up phase, however insiders are needed to keep the community going’. 

Facilitating serendipitous learning

Can we help people to learn unintentionally? ‘Often browsing on the web is seen as distraction. We should emphasize that it important to stimulate out-of-the-box thinking and it challenges our mental models. Managers don’t see browsing on the internet as learning. We can promote serendipitous learning as a strategy. We also need to help people understand that you can’t manage and capture everybody’s learning. You can’t lock it up in a database. Most of what we learn is accidental, serendipitous. We can encourage and support it, and measure it’s impact on people’s productivity and performance.’ ‘Recognise that people do learn in that way. Learning professionals can help by showing places and tools to learn serendipitously and help find connections.’

Intelligent filtering will be the next trend for learning organisations

‘Techcrunch’ and ‘Mashable’ are two resource sites which feed the professional garden of Jane with new tools.  ‘Learning is a life long process!  Passion, dedication and doing things from the heart, are the main ingredients. And what trend does Jane foresee for learning organisations in the future?  ‘Intelligent filtering will be the next stage in making people in organisations smarter.  By then we will not talk about social media, but about web 3.0 education models’.

More resource materials:

Jane Hart’s presentations at   >>>  http://www.slideshare.net/janehart

Serendipitous learning:  Recognizing and fostering the potential of micro blogging

John Moravec – Education futures -  The education 3.0 model   and a VPRO documentary about the Education 3.0 model

The next webinar will deal about  engaging and activating online communities with Nancy White as expert.  The webinar will take place on 21st February, 2012 from 15.30 – 17.00 hrs Amsterdam GMT-1 time.  More information,  Faciliteeronline.nl

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7 tips voor inrichten online leerplatform

Datum: 2011.12.13 | Categoriën: Facilitator tips, Ontwerpen | Antwoord: 0

Een online (leer)omgeving is snel gestart. Een NING heb je zo in de lucht. Maar hoe richt je dit zo in dat het gaat werken? Dat gebruikers  er de weg kunnen vinden? Dat ze zich uitgenodigd voelen tot netwerken, bijdragen, interactie? Vragen die wij regelmatig krijgen. In een eerdere blogpost heb ik beschreven hoe je een start kunt maken met online leren. Nu nog een stapje daarvoor: waar kun je op letten bij het inrichten van een online omgeving? Ervaring leert dat een aantal punten hier echt bij werken. Zeven punten (ik heb net ergens gelezen dat zeven een magisch getal is …) die wij eigenlijk altijd meenemen in het ontwerp van een online leeromgeving.

1. Aantrekkelijke vormgeving

Wie is je doelgroep en wat voor uitstraling past hierbij? Moet de omgeving een professionele look hebben, een sociale, een heel ontspannen of juist actieve? Is het belangrijk dat de vormgeving gelijk laat zien waar de omgeving bij hoort? Bij welke organisatie, bij welk netwerk, bij welk thema? Wij proberen te zorgen voor een online plek waar professioneel en sociaal bij elkaar komen. Omdat we erin geloven dat beide aspecten nodig zijn voor kennisuitwisseling en interactie.

Vaak krijg je een beeld van de mogelijkheden door enkele voorbeeldomgevingen te bekijken. Bij praktische elke tool is dit wel mogelijk. Aantrekkelijke vormgeving zit ‘m ook in het gebruik van foto’s en afbeeldingen naast tekst. En denk eens aan metaforen om iets uit te drukken: de bungalow voor kennismaking in kleinere samenstelling, aan de keukentafel voor diepere gesprekken tot diep in de nacht….

2. Veel aanbieden

Een online omgeving is aantrekkelijk om naar toe te gaan doordat er wat te vinden is. Op een gegeven moment zit de waarde in de discussies die daar plaats vinden en het collectieve geheugen wat je met elkaar opbouwt. In het begin kun je dit al voeden door bijvoorbeeld een bibliotheek aan te leggen met links naar waardevolle blogposts, online artikelen, een boeken top tien en YouTube filmpjes over het onderwerp.

3. Deelnemers verbinden

Om online activiteit en interactie te stimuleren is met elkaar kennismaken van belang. Voor mij is een ingang om anderen online te leren kennen het persoonlijk profiel. En dan wel een profiel dat er aantrekkelijk uit ziet. Qua vormgeving en inhoud, met foto erbij. Ik vind het prettig in het profiel iets te lezen wat een gemakkelijk haakje is om contact op te leggen. Een interessante hobby, een boek dat iemand aan het lezen is, een project waar diegene middenin zit. Daarnaast werkt het prettig om aan een concrete opdracht te moeten werken in kleinere samenstelling. Zo’n opdracht kan in het begin zijn: vind uit wat je met elkaar deelt, bedenk een karakteristieke naam voor jullie als groep, wissel eens met elkaar uit over…

4. Overzicht bieden

Cruciaal! En op veel verschillende manieren te bereiken. Als gebruiker is het prettig om de hoofdpagina te kunnen gebruiken als een soort wegwijzer. Daar staat, altijd op een vaste plek, wat er online te doen is en waar je wat kunt vinden. Heb je technische ondersteuning nodig, dan lees je daar hoe je die snel kunt krijgen. En zoek naar een logische manier van indelen. Tabjes met een naam die gelijk zegt waar het over gaat. Discussies die zijn onderverdeeld in categorieën. Tags die je gebruikt om verschillende informatielijnen makkelijk te vinden. In het begin lijkt de omgeving al snel logisch, maar ga je er vanuit dat er veel interactie gaat plaatsvinden dan kan het al snel onoverzichtelijk worden. En niets is vervelender dan lang zoeken naar iets wat je nodig hebt, gezien hebt, maar waarvan je niet meer precies weet waar het stond.

5. Hoofdpagina als dashboard

In veel leerprocessen gebruik je niet maar 1 social media tool, maar vullen tools elkaar aan. Je gebruikt social bookmarking om interessante weblinks met elkaar te delen. Twitter om met een grotere groep te communiceren. En een wiki om samen te werken aan online producten. Het werkt heel prettig om 1 ingang te hebben, van waaruit je makkelijk door kunt naar de andere tools. Zo kun je de twitterstream zichtbaar maken in de online omgeving, een link naar de social bookmarking tool zichtbaar op de hoofdpagina zetten, en een wiki ‘in de omgeving hangen’.

6. Meerdere manieren van navigeren

We hebben allemaal verschillende zoek- en werkstijlen. De een gebruikt de tabjes in de omgeving, de ander kijkt eerst naar het overzicht van laatste activiteiten. Zorg ervoor dat je deze verschillende manieren van navigeren aanbiedt.

7. Maak activiteit zichtbaar

Niets is vervelender dan naar een online omgeving gaan en het idee hebben dat daar weinig gebeurt. Een hoofdpagina die er voortdurend hetzelfde uitziet maakt niet dat je nieuwsgierig wordt. Zorg dat je op de hoofdpagina de activiteit zichtbaar maakt: tweets, laatste activiteiten, een nieuw gestarte discussie, een geplaatste blogpost, een toegevoegd filmpje, een nieuwe link naar een artikel.

Heb jij aanvullingen? Punten die jij gebruikt bij het inrichten van een online leeromgeving? Leuk om eens te horen en met elkaar te delen!

Deze blogpost is ook geplaatst op mijn website Link2Learn.

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The Flipped (or Social) Webinar

Datum: 2011.12.08 | Categoriën: Faciliteren, Informeel leren | Antwoord: 13

You have probably heard about The Flipped Classroom model where the traditional classroom has been flipped on its head, so that students watch lectures as homework and then apply the concepts in the classroom.  If not, you can read more in Dan Pink’s article in The Telegraph here.

Anyway, when I was discussing my upcoming webinar with Sibrenne, Simon and Joitske, I thought it might be a good idea to try the same with the traditional webinar model, and flip that.  So that instead of me presenting to you for an hour with only a small amount of time for questions which you have to think up on the spot, we flip that model.  So I provide you with some article to read in advance, which means that you have time to read it and reflect on it, as well as consider the questions you’d like to ask. And then we spend the time on the webinar discussing your questions, and their application and implication for workplace learning.

So, what should I ask you to read?  Well I’ve been writing a lot, as you may well know, about the use of social media for learning and,  in conjunction with my Internet Time Alliance colleagues (Jay Cross, Harold Jarche, Charles Jennings and Clark Quinn), a lot too on the importance of working smarter.  So I thought an article that brought these two aspects together and which summarised a lot of my thinking would be the best place to start. Of course it’s then up to you if you want to read further around it.   So here’s the article to get you started:

>> 10 steps for working smarter with social media 

Now, in order that we have time to prepare for the webinar on Thursday evening, it would be great if you could leave your questions in the comments area below by the end of Wednesday 14 December 2010.  If you would like to ask me any other questions, please feel free to leave them here too!  Of course there will also be an opportunity to ask other questions in the webinar itself – and also some time too to get your feedback on Flipped Webinars.

I look forward to reading your questions – and talking with you on Thursday 15th at 20.00 Amsterdam time in our Flipped Webinar!

Jane Hart

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